And you wonder why we need regulations

I grew up in a large family in a small house where the kids were in classrooms with as many as 50 classmates. So, a lot of colds.

To treat all these colds, my parents relied on a combo of remedies. 

One of the remedies was slathering Vicks VapoRub on the chest of the kid-with-a-cold, and keeping the Vapo in place - or protecting the kid-with-a-cold's PJs - by placing a scratchy square of an old woolen blanket on top of the Vicks. Vicks VapoRub could also be applied to the sides of the kid-with-a-cold's nose, or under their nostrils. Sometimes, in case of grave stuffy nose-ness, Vicks VapoRub was used in a vaporizer. 

Since kids-with-colds need sleep, another technique was conking the kid-with-a-cold out by administering a hot toddy. The toddy was composed of boiling water, an eyedropper's worth of Four Roses - my parents weren't big drinkers, but there was always a bottle of Four Roses around for social occasions that called for a highball - a teaspoon of sugar, and a squirt of RealLemon.

And then, for croupy colds, there was a dose of cough syrup: Robitussin or Cheracol. 

I'm pretty sure that, in treating all those all too common colds, my parents never spent a second worrying about whether the way they were treating their kids-with-colds was doing anything but good. 

But we were in the United States, where even in the 1950's and 1960's, the government was watching over what went into over-the-counter medicines. 

In the rest of the world, especially the poorer parts of the rest of the world, parents are not so fortunate. 

Last year, more than 300 infants, across three continents, died from taking tainted cough syrup, largely in countries that don't have much by way of safety testing in place.

The "substandard and falsified medicines" are found in countries like Gambia, Cameroon, Liberia, Uzbekistan. 

Unscrupulous actors sometimes substitute propylene glycol with toxic alternatives, ethylene glycol and diethylene glycol, because they are cheaper, several pharmaceutical manufacturing experts told Reuters.

The alternatives are more commonly used in brake fluid and other products not meant for human consumption.

The WHO's working theory is that in 2021, when prices of propylene glycol spiked, one or more suppliers mixed the cheaper toxic liquids with the legitimate chemical, [WHO's Rutendo] Kuwana said. He did not say where the suppliers were based, and added that obscure supply chains have made proving this difficult.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers, including those alleged to have produced the tainted syrups that have been found so far, typically source ingredients from external suppliers. (Source: Reuters)

This time around, fingers do seem to be pointing to India as the culprit.

Imagine living in a desperately poor country and having a baby who's coughing their head off. You do the best you can do, and that may mean using what little money you have to buy a bottle of something that you believe will make your baby more comfortable. And then...

Carping about oppressive government regulation is a pervasive indoor sport in America. I'm sure here are plenty of unnecessary and ridiculous regulations on the books. They're not all that hard to find, as those carping about oppressive government regulations well know. But I'm just as happy to live in a place where a parent giving their kid-with-a-cold a swig of Cheracol and putting them down for the night with a slug of watered-down Four Roses can do so without worrying about whether those kids-with-colds are going to wake up in the morning.